Panthers' strength of schedule gives hope Carolina can turn things around in 2025

The Carolina Panthers have had a busy offseason, with the team making several moves to improve the roster on both sides of the ball, which gives hope for 2025 and beyond.

Further elevating that hope for the upcoming season is the team's strength of schedule. Warren Sharp of Sharp Football Analysis crunched the numbers based on projected 2025 win totals coming from Vegas oddsmakers and the Panthers have the seventh-easiest slate.

There are two ways to calculate strength of schedule, with one of them being the way Sharp did it.

The other way is to use win totals from the previous season, but that's the worse method to calculate SOS because teams can improve or decline drastically from year-to-year, especially if they've added or lost key talent during the offseason.

When it comes to just NFC teams, only three have an easier slate than Carolina, the San Francisco 49ers, New Orleans Saints and Atlanta Falcons.

Of course, a lot of that has to do with the Panthers playing a third-place schedule after finishing third in the NFC North just ahead of the Saints based on a tiebreaker in 2024.

While we'll have to wait until May 14 for the Panthers' exact schedule, we do know who their opponents will be.

Home opponents: Atlanta Falcons, New Orleans Saints, Tampa Bay Bucs, Los Angeles Rams, Seattle Seahawks, Buffalo Bills, Miami Dolphins, Dallas Cowboys.

Road opponents: Falcons, Saints, Bucs, Arizona Cardinals, San Francisco 49ers, New England Patriots, New York Jets, Green Bay Packers, Jacksonville Jaguars.

Of their 14 opponents, only four of them made the playoffs in 2024, a list that includes the Packers, Bucs, Rams and Bills.

Now, nobody is going to sit here and say that this means the Panthers are going to make a huge leap forward in 2025, but having an easier strength of schedule certainly helps.

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